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HSUS goes after ‘puppy mills’ at federal level

The Humane Society of the United States says it is trying to get President Obama to close a loophole they say is causing the “puppy mill” problems in the nation. HSUS says more than 20-thousand signatures have been submitted to the White House “We the People” online petition campaign, more than enough to get the president’s attention.

Melanie Kahn is Senior Director of Puppy Mill Campaigns for the HSUS says breeders who sell dogs on the internet and on the side of the road should not be exempt from federal regulation. “Specifically,” Kahn tells Brownfield, “What we’re saying is, anyone who sells dogs to the public – 50 or more dogs a year – should be required to have a federal license and be inspected.”

Kahn says many states don’t regulate dog breeders who sell to the public so the HSUS is taking it to the federal level. “We come at this issue that faces our country from all different levels and this is just one more way that we are trying to combat this problem,” Kahn says.

Missouri Farmers Care spokesman Don Nikodim, head of the Missouri Pork Producers, says HSUS is out to stop animal agriculture and will use as many means as they can, including this federal petition and the recent ag council set up between the Nebraska Farmers Union and the HSUS…

“You know, there’s no end to the resources seems like HSUS has and for them to be able to bring these groups in under the same tent and work with them when they want to put them out of business is just unbelievable.”

Karen Strange, with the Missouri Federation of Animal Owners, tells Brownfield the HSUS federal petition “is definitely an invasion into the homes and private lives of many animal owners, all in the guise of cracking down on the bad guys.” Earlier this year, Missouri ag and dog breeding groups worked with lawmakers to remove broad language and the 50-dog limit and other restrictions from the voter approved, HSUS-backed “puppy mill” ballot initiative in Missouri.

AUDIO: Melanie Kahn (4:00 mp3)

AUDIO: Don Nikodim (5:00 mp3)

  • 7 Things You Didn’t Know About HSUS
    (The Humane Society of the United States)

    1. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is a “humane society” in name only, since it doesn’t operate a single pet shelter or pet adoption facility anywhere in the United States. HSUS operates sanctuaries for large animals only, not shelters within the commonly accepted definition of shelter. During 2006, HSUS contributed only 4.2 percent of its budget to organizations that operate hands-on dog and cat shelters. In reality, HSUS is a wealthy animal-rights lobbying organization (the largest and richest on earth) that agitates for the same goals as PETA and other radical groups.

    2. Beginning on the day of NFL quarterback Michael Vick’s2007 dog fighting indictment, HSUS raised money online with the false promise that it would “care for the dogs seized in the Michael Vick case.” The New York Times later reported that HSUS wasn’t caring for Vick’s dogs at all. And HSUS president Wayne Pacelle told the Times that his group recommended that government officials “put down” (that is, kill) the dogs rather than adopt them out to suitable homes. HSUS later quietly altered its Internet fundraising pitch.

    3. HSUS’s senior management includes a former spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), a criminal group designated as “terrorists” by the FBI. HSUS president Wayne Pacelle hired John “J.P.” Goodwin in 1997, the same year Goodwin described himself as “spokesperson for the ALF” while he fielded media calls in the wake of an ALF arson attack at a California veal processing plant. In 1997, when asked by reporters for a reaction to an ALF arson fire at a farmer’s feed co-op in Utah (which nearly killed a family sleeping on the premises), Goodwin replied, “We’re ecstatic.” That same year, Goodwin was arrested at a UC Davis protest celebrating the 10-year anniversary of an ALF arson at the university that caused $5 million in damage. And in 1998, Goodwin described himself publicly as a “former member of ALF.”

    4.HSUS raised a reported $34 million in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, supposedly to help reunite lost pets with their owners. But comparatively little of that money was spent for its intended purpose. Louisiana’s Attorney General shuttered his 18-month-long investigation into where most of these millions went, shortly after HSUS announced its plan to contribute $600,000 toward the construction of an animal shelter on the grounds of a state prison. Public disclosures of the disposition of the $34 million in Katrina-related donations add up to less than $7 million.

    5. After gathering undercover video footage of improper animal handling at a Chino, CA slaughterhouse during November of 2007, HSUS sat on its video evidence for three months, even refusing to share it with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. HSUS’s Dr. Michael Greger testified before Congress that the San Bernardino County (CA) District Attorney’s office asked the group “to hold on to the information while they completed their investigation.” But the District Attorney’s office quickly denied that account, even declaring that HSUS refused to make its undercover spy available to investigators if the USDA were present at those meetings. Ultimately, HSUS chose to release its video footage at a more politically opportune time, as it prepared to launch a livestock-related ballot campaign in California. Meanwhile, meat from the slaughterhouse continued to flow into the U.S. food supply for months.

    6. According to a 2008 Los Angeles Times investigation, less than 12 percent of money raised for HSUS by California telemarketers actually ends up in HSUS’s bank account. The rest is kept by professional fundraisers. And if you exclude two campaigns run for HSUS by the “Build-a-Bear Workshop” retail chain, which consisted of the sale of surplus stuffed animals (not really “fundraising”), HSUS’s yield number shrinks to just 3 percent. Sadly, this appears typical. In 2004, HSUS ran a telemarketing campaign in Connecticut with fundraisers who promised to return a minimum of zero percent of the proceeds. The campaign raised over $1.4 million. Not only did absolutely none of that money go to HSUS, but the group paid $175,000 for the telemarketing work.

    7. Research shows that HSUS’s heavily promoted U.S. “boycott” of Canadian seafood—announced in 2005 as a protest against Canada’s annual seal hunt—is a phony exercise in media manipulation. A 2006 investigation found that 78 percent of the restaurants and seafood distributors described by HSUS as “boycotters” weren’t participating at all. Nearly two-thirds of them told surveyors they were completely unaware HSUS was using their names in connection with an international boycott campaign. Canada’s federal government is on record about this deception, saying: “Some animal rights groups have been misleading the public for years … it’s no surprise at all that the richest of them would mislead the public with a phony seafood boycott.”

    Revised October 2008. Complete sources and documentation available upon request.

  • Wouldn’t it be a great idea to find out how big a problem “puppy mills” are in the US? Should it be a national issue? Can anything be enforced nationally? And most importantly, how will it be paid for and by whom? There is no common sense here. Fifty dogs a year? Come on, anyone can be cruel and neglectful of dogs, whether it is one dog or 1,000, this is just another way for HSUS to eliminate the breeding of pets, one step at a time. Here in Wisconsin, for example, the HSUS backed a so-called “puppy mill bill” – which it wasn’t, by the way – by shouting loudly that there were 2,000 ‘PMs’ in Wisconsin. Horrors, what a crisis! Raise the alarm!! And by the time the bill was passed into law, and the Dept. of Ag, Trade & Consumer Protection (DATCP) finally had their chance to send out applications to all potential ‘PMs’ – oops, licensees, they found fewer than 300, and when the total came through with actual licensed breeders, animal shelters, vet offices, rescues and some other dog-related businesses, the total number was about 178. TWO THOUSAND down to 178? And now we have six highly paid DATCP inspectors scrambling like mad to justify these useless positions by going after the little guys who don’t qualify for licensing. They recently brought charges against a small rescue because of a Facebook post about a dog that never set foot in Wisconsin, and since that same dog’s info was posted 17 times, DATCP says this rescue group is criminally liable for not getting a license because they ‘sold’ more than 25 dogs – of course 17 was really 1 dog . . . as Charlie Brown said, AAARRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!! HSUS is a giant, bloated bully, pushing around our lawmakers and the public and pretending to ‘protect’ animals from abuse and neglect. In fact, improvements in animal welfare work against HSUS’s mission – which is actually to eliminate animal cruelty by eliminating animals from our lives. The dog people just happen to be easy pickin’s, but HSUS sharpens it’s claws for ever more powerful attacks on all forms of animal agriculture.

  • Correction: The Wisconsin list of breeders, humane societies, shelters, vet clinics, boarding kennels, breed rescue and ‘other’ that qualify for the new licenses came to 278, not 178. Still, that is little more than 10% of the HSUS-created ‘crisis of animal cruelty in puppy mills’. The most important number here is 158, which is the actual number of breeders (the HSUS definition of ‘puppy mill’) who sell more than 25 dogs in a year. One hundred and fifty eight vs. two thousand.

    If animal professionals and hobbyists don’t stop picking each other apart – dog breeders saying “HE’S a PM, and farmers criticizing production systems to promote their own – there will be nothing left to criticize in a flash. HSUS plants the seeds and lets the rest of us tend their ‘crop’ of destruction. What happened in Wisconsin was the typical HSUS practice of crying “Fire” in a crowded theater. Only later do we discover it was a smoke bomb, and HSUS lit the fuse.

    I’m not a dog breeder or a farmer, just a dog lover who likes to eat great food. We all have to stop feeding the HSUS Alligator pushing our neighbors in front of us. When they are gone, guess who will be next on the menu.

  • The HSUS needs to learn to stop medddling where it doesn’t belong, the USDA has been doing a perfectly good job of keeping tabs on Ag.issues and the only thing HSUS is doing is stirring up trouble. they think that by lying to people and deceiving them of the truth that they’ll stop All agricultural activity from happening, but what happens when it’s their families starving and dying from malnutrition? what will they do when farmers can no longer feed the growing population because of regulations put in place by Your so called “friendly” HSUS? you can only cry “wolf” a few times before people start to catch on and the lies become unveiled, and let me tell you that when these people open their eyes and realize the deceptions taking place right under their noses, they won’t be too friendly (or happy) about it. my point is, These organizations are causing more harm than they are good. they may think they’re helping, but how many of these people.citizens know the truth? have they seen any of it with their own eyes, or was it just hearsay? gossip comes in many forms and one thing that never changes is how it spreads like a wildfire spreading lies about anything it so chooses. i’m just a simple, 16 year old farm girl who’s trying to make a living just like evrybody else but the thing is the HSUS and organizations like PETA (which i like to joke about how it also stands for people eating tasty animals!) don’t care about anyone but themselves and money. it’s a sad reality, but it’s a looming threat that cannot be ignored!

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